It could be part of the reason why last year, as a freshman at Xavier, Ciamarra won both the Class LL and State Open titles.

"He's very even-tempered," Xavier's first-year coach Peter Lyons said. "At that age, guys will tend to play a lot on emotion. When things are going well, they're great. When things are not going well, not so great. He'll re-focus very quickly.

"It is an unusual focus. Sometimes kids aren't mentally tough. They don't know how to bounce back from mistakes and bad calls. It's never an issue in his case."

Ciamarra, who was The Courant's boys tennis player of the year last year, is 9-0. His team (8-1) had its first loss Friday, to Cheshire, 4-3.

And according to athletic director Tony Jaskot, Ciamarra could play a variety of sports at Xavier.

Xavier High School and Cheshire High School's tennis teams faced off against eachother at Watrous Park in Cromwell

(Peter Casolino)

"He's a great athlete all-around," Jaskot said. "He could make the soccer team. He could be a great golfer. I strongly feel he could play any sport here and play it well."

Tennis was his first sport. Ciamarra remembers his grandfather Ralph taking him out to hit tennis balls in the driveway when Ciamarra was 4 or 5. Ciamarra loved soccer and he played basketball and baseball, but tennis was his favorite and the other sports eventually fell by the wayside.

"I started competing a long time ago," he said. "But I started getting serious my freshman year."

Ciamarra, who used to live in Newtown, started at the Tennis Club of Trumbull, where he still works with Brian Barker, the longtime coach of James Blake and Matt Daly. His family moved to Minnesota and then back to Connecticut, relocating in Southington and Ciamarra started at Xavier last year.

"He's got a complete game," Lyons said. "His service game is great. He can get to the net, volley. But he concentrates so well. You don't talk to him much, or at all, during a match; he's an accomplished tournament player. He knows what he's doing."

Ciamarra said that when he was younger, he wasn't always so focused.

"I probably wasn't the best at keeping my mind straight," he said. "It's definitely gotten better once the team came along. Especially the coaches. They've helped me a ton.

"You see kids throwing their rackets and yelling. Sometimes, I think, 'Oh my God, I just lost to some kid I should have beat.' But it's all about keeping your mind straight. If you know you played your best and tried your hardest ... You can still have bad days. Everybody does. Even when you do have bad days, you have to stay focused and just keep going. Sometimes you're going to have a great day and you're going to beat somebody you shouldn't."

Last season, Ciamarra lost once, to Amity's Jason Seidman, then the defending Class LL champion, in three sets in their regular season match. But in the Class LL semifinals, he beat Seidman, a junior, 6-7 (4-7), 6-0, 7-6 (7-4).

"That was a long match," Ciamarra said. "I got home at 7:30 [that night] and had finals the next day. A lot of my teammates came out and supported me even though they had finals the next day. That was definitely helpful."

He then dispatched the No. 2 seed, Bryson Mosley of Ridgefield, 6-3, 6-0 in the final. And at the State Open, he beat Luke Foreman of Staples 6-2, 6-2 to win the title.

He will face Seidman for the first time this season when Xavier faces Amity May 11 in a home match at Watrous Park in Cromwell.

This year, Ciamarra said he doesn't really have any goals. He could have a good day or a bad day during the state tournament. That's life.

"I didn't expect to win it last year at all," he said. "It was definitely a surprise. This year, I don't even know. We'll see what happens when we get there."